Haida Tribe

Haida Indians, Haida Nation (Xa’ida, ‘people’). The native and popular name for the Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands., British Columbia, and the south end of Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, comprising the Skittagetan family. By the natives themselves the term may be applied generally to any human being or specifically to one speaking the Haida language. Some authors have improperly restricted the application of the tend to the Queen Charlotte islanders, calling the Alaskan Haida, Kaigani. Several English variants of this word owe their origin to the fact that a suffix usually accompanies it in the native language, making it Hā’dē in one dialect and Haidaga’i in the other.

On the ground of physical characteristics the Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian peoples should be grouped together. Language and social organization indicate still closer affinities between the Haida and Tlingit.

According to their own traditions the oldest Haida towns stood on the east shore, at Naikum and on the broken coast of Moresby island. Later a portion of the people moved to the west coast, and between 150 and 200 years ago a still larger section, the Kaigani, drove the Tlingit from part of Prince of Wales island and settled there. Although it is not impossible that the Queen Charlotte islands were visited by Spaniards during the 17th century, the first certain account of their discovery is that by Ensign Juan Perez, in the corvette Santiago, in 1774. He named the north point of the island, Cabo de Santa Margarita. Bodega and Maurelle visited them the year after. In 1786 La Perouse coasted the shores of the islands, and the following year Capt. Dixon spent more than a month around them, and the islands are named from his vessel, the Queen Charlotte. After that time scores of vessels from England and New England resorted to the coast, principally to trade for furs, in which business the earlier voyagers reaped golden harvest. The most important expeditions, as those of which there is some record, were by Capt. Douglas, Capt. Jos. Ingraham of Boston, Capt. Etienne Marchand in the French ship Solide, and Capt. Geo. Vancouver1

The advent of whites was, as usual, disastrous to the natives. They were soon stripped of their valuable furs, and, through smallpox and general immorality, they have been reduced in the last 60 years to one-tenth of then former strength. A station of the Hudson Bay Company was long established at Messet, but is now longer remunerative. At Skidegate there are works for the extraction of dogfish oil, which furnish employment to the people during much of the year; but in summer all the Indians from this place and Masset go to the mainland to work in salmon canneries. The Masset people also make many canoes of immense cedars to sell to other a coast tribes. The Kaigani still occupy 3 towns, but the population of 2 of them, Kasaan and Klinkwan, is inconsiderable. Neighboring salmon canneries give them work all summer.

Mission stations are maintained by the Methodists at Skidegate, by the Church of England at Masset, and by the Presbyterian at Howkan, Alaska. Nearly all of the people are nominally Christians.

The Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian seem to show greater adaptability to civilization and to display less religious conservatism than many of the tribes farther south. They are generally regarded as superior to them by the white settlers, and they certainly showed themselves such in war and in the arts. Of all peoples of the north west coast the Haida were the best carvers, painters, and canoe and house builders, and they still earn considerable money by selling carved objects of wood and slate to traders and tourists. Standing in the tribe depended more on the possession of property than on ability in war, so that considerable interchange of goods took place and the people became sharp traders. The morals of the people were, however, very loose.

Canoes were to the people of this coast what the horse became to the Plains Indians. They were hollowed out of single logs of cedar, and were sometimes very large. Houses were built of huge cedar beams and planks which were worked out with adzes and wedges made anciently of stone, and put together at great feasts called by the whites by the jargon word “potlatch”. Each house ordinarily had a single carved pole in the middle of the gable enc: presented to the beach. Often the end posts in front were also carved and the whole house front painted. The dead were placed in mortuary houses, in boxes on carved poles, or sometimes in caves. Shamans were placed after death in small houses built on prominent points along shore. Among the beliefs of the Haida reincarnation held a prominent place.

An estimate of the Haida population made, according to Dawson, by John Work, between 1836 and 1841, gives a total of 8,328, embracing 1,735 Kaigani and 6,593 Queen Charlotte islanders. Dawson estimated the number of people on the Queen Charlotte islads. In 1880 as between 1,700 and 2,000. An estimate made for the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs in 18882 gives 2,500, but the figures were evidently exaggerated, for when a census of Masset, Skidegate, and Gold Harbor was taken the year after3 it gave only 637. This, however, left out of consideration the people of New Kloo. In 18944, when these were first added to the list, the entire Haida population was found to be 639. The figures for the year following were 593, but from that time showed an increase and stood at 734 in 1902. In 1904, however, they had suffered a sharp decline to 587. Petroff in 1880-81 reported 788 Kaigani, but this figure may be somewhat too high, since Dall about the same time estimated their number at 300. According to the census of 1890 there were 391, and they are now (1905) estimated at 300. The entire Haida population would thus seem to be about 900.

The Alaskan Haida are called Kaigani. By the Queen Charlotte islanders they are designated Kets-hade (Q!ēts xa’dē), which probably means ‘people of the strait.’ The people of Masset inlet and the nort end of Queen Charlotte islands generally are called by their southern kinsmen Gao-haidagai (Gao xā’-idAga-i), ‘inlet people,’ and those living around the southern point of the group are called Gunghet-haidagai (GA’ ñxet-xā’-idAga-i), from the name of one of the most southerly capes in their territory. All of these latter finally settled in the town afterward known to whites as Ninstints, and hence came to be called Ninstints people.

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